


Life and Death

by Mendeia



Series: Proximity to Balance [13]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 05:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendeia/pseuds/Mendeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, where it mattered, Heero and Wufei were the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life and Death

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't originally part of the series, but it seemed like it needed to be. Besides, I don't think I've given Wufei and Heero enough screen-time.
> 
> Enjoy!

Once, they had spoken across a deserted hangar bay, understanding so much and so little in a small number of words. It didn't matter – it had never mattered – that they had really only known one another for a few days. It didn't matter that they came at their missions from nearly opposite perspectives.

In the end, where it mattered, Heero and Wufei were the same.

Wufei's heart was quiet and studious, loyal and brave, but resigned to silence; Heero's was fierce and stubborn, focused and deliberate, but untested and immature. Wufei's fights were always brutal and overwhelming, his power a force of pure physics against his opponents; Heero's were calculating and harsh, the slice of cold logic and ice that quenches fire. Wufei hated weakness because he knew himself to be weak; Heero hated failure for the same reason.

The day they came to understand each other was the day they met. The day it _mattered_ , that was something else.

Agents Zero One and Zero Five had taken a mission alone together – the other three were on Earth, Quatre on WEI business and the other two watching his back. The pair had shoot-to-kill orders against a rogue military squadron that had taken up arms and barricaded themselves inside a small science station orbiting L3. A full Preventers team was already on the way, and the advance force had positioned themselves to trade fire with the terrorists, but Zero One and Zero Five were tasked with sneaking in and shutting down the base, and as many as its inhabitants as possible, from a rear weak-point.

The pair of them went about the mission with efficient stoicism. Neither flinched as they took lives rather than see the other killed, neither hesitated as they made their way through the station, dropping enemies as they cleared room after room. Until they reached the communications center, that is. The room was critical to the mission, as it housed many of the visual and audio equipment their enemies were using to defend against the Preventers agents outside. Zero One and Zero Five had to shut down the computers or many agents would die.

What all their careful mission-planning had not anticipated, however, was the inhabitants of the room.

When Heero and Wufei unlocked the door and stormed in, weapons drawn, the very last sight either could have expected was the pair of children sitting at the controls. The children turned to them with blanked, empty expressions, absolutely alien on their young faces; they could not have been more than six or seven years old. Wufei and Heero stopped just inside the door, simultaneously frozen.

"What are you doing here?" Wufei found his voice first.

"Helping," replied the little boy monotonously. "Pushing the button when it blinks red."

"Why?" Heero put in.

"Because we'll die," the girl beside him said. "See?" She shifted very slightly in her seat, and the two young men at once identified the heavy vests the children wore as explosive-laden bombs. A quick glance told both pilots that the vests had been rigged to the computer terminals themselves. That they would explode if regular action was not taken on the computers.

"What are your orders?" Heero asked.

"When the button blinks red," the boy said, turning back to the panel, "we push it. And when this other one pinpoints a location, we fire on it."

Wufei moved to look at the controls and felt rage and sickness permeate his stomach. He might have vomited if he hadn't been so, so angry. What the boy pointed to was what Preventers had assumed was an automated defense net of lasers.

The children were shooting at Preventers agents, and killing them.

Heero moved to Wufei's side and his blazing blue eyes met infuriated black ones. They passed a long moment in silence. Then, Heero knelt between the two children's chairs, looking at them carefully. When he spoke, it was not in the tone of Agent Zero One, but the Heero Yuy who had only last week set a cool cloth on Quatre's forehead when the blond was suffering a migraine, the Heero Yuy who lost a tickle-fight to Duo.

"What do you want?" he asked them softly. "Do you want to keep fighting? Or do you want to stop?"

Wufei held his breath. These were _children_. They should _not_ be fighting. But another part of him understood Heero's point. Even as children, they could choose for themselves. What they said next would determine if they were hostages or enemies. And even if the courts would rule them too young to answer for their crimes, if those crimes were willfully committed, someday they would be here again. Heero wanted to know if he was going to look into the face of a terrorist in ten years and see the same eyes looking back at him.

The two exchanged glances. Wufei realized they must be siblings, twins if he was to guess. The girl in particular reminded him of Meiran with her long, glossy dark hair. As if instinctively, the girl and boy reached out to clasp hands. It was the girl who spoke in a voice that trembled with fear.

"Our mom is dead. We don't want to die."

"If we could free you so that you would be safe," Wufei moved to lean over where Heero knelt, bending so he could look them both in the eye, "would you want to stay and fight?"

"Yes," they both whispered against tears.

Heero and Wufei nodded in tandem. Wufei expected Heero would reach for the bombs to defuse them, but instead he rose. "I'll alert Une," he said.

Wufei didn't know what was in Zero One's mind, but he could clearly see a memory racing across the eyes that wouldn't meet his own, a memory of an explosion and a death that he did not want to repeat. Wufei nodded in acceptance – this would be his burden to bear, then.

"Do not move," he said to the pair of them. "I will free you, but you must be still and quiet."

He felt his heart hitch at the silent tears that ran down their cheeks, but they nodded and simply held onto one another as he moved around them, delicately examining wires and fuses. After a few moments, the girl stifled a gasp, and he looked.

The red button was blinking, and the targeting program had identified a Preventers target.

Before either child could move, Heero was there, firing the laser and pushing the glowing indicator button. He also held a communicator to his mouth, speaking rapidly. "Discharge in five seconds. Tell Agent Water to move forty-six degrees to her left to evade. Clear quadrant two or that will be the next target."

Wufei returned to his task, aware that the pair of children had relaxed marginally at no longer being responsible for the controls. He wondered if they knew what they had been doing, how many lives they had endangered, and expected with sickness that they did.

Heero had to fire at his own allies twice more before Wufei managed to extricate both children from their restraints and vests. The moment they were free, he found himself reaching to pull the girl into his arms. Beside him, Heero had lifted the boy and held him tightly against his chest.

Wordlessly, they retreated to the doorway, where Heero handed the boy to Wufei, who carried them around the corner and down the corridor away from the control room, while Agent Zero One, detonated the already-present explosives. He joined them after the explosion shook the entire station, face impassive but not unreadable.

"Here," he held out his arms and the boy crawled across Wufei's shoulders to set himself in Heero's grasp. The children traded another look of fear and uncertainty before turning to them with identical lost expressions.

"We still have a job to do, Zero One," Wufei found himself saying.

"No," Heero's voice was sharp and solid. "We have a more important mission now."

Wufei looked at the boy, fingers curled tightly into Heero's Preventers jacket. He looked at where the tiny girl had buried her face on his shoulder and he could feel her breath on his neck. The station was still full of terrorists, and Preventers was counting on them to disable it from the rear, but if they moved forward, these children would be in danger.

Wufei found himself smiling. It was not a decision he might have made a year ago, and not one he would have expected the Perfect Soldier to make, and it gave him hope for the both of them that they made it now.

"Agreed."

Heero contacted Une and told her something that kept her from shouting at either of them over the comms, but the specifics didn't matter to Wufei. The only thing he cared about was holding the little girl carefully, moving silently, and ensuring any time he rounded a blind corner that no part of the child was vulnerable before he had cleared it.

They reached their shuttle with no obstacles and took off, heading away from the station without a second thought. Wufei settled in to pilot, Heero taking both children to seats where he could strap them in together. As soon as they were under the shock blanket he found for them, they fell asleep. Heero did not move from his self-appointed position watching over them, but he did call up to Wufei when he was certain the children were deeply asleep.

"You abandoned the mission," was all he said.

"So did you," Wufei replied.

"No," and he could hear relief and something real, not the robotic soldier in the voice. "No, we completed it."

Wufei closed his eyes for a moment of something strong in his heart. "Yes, I suppose we did."


End file.
